We received a little over four and a half inches of rain from January 18 to Sunday, January 23, the most we have received in a very long time over such a short period. We got just over three of those inches Sunday. Of those three inches, a large amount fell from the time Leah and I tried to get into our car to go for some dinner and the time we got out about a half an hour later. This was the result in the front yard.
I had spent some time spreading wheat straw and digging trenches to try to channel the water away from the leach field. That was generally successful, but I need to do more between the leach field and the driveway.
The lighter straw covers a repair to the septic drainage components. Ours is a very shallow conventional system. Someone drove over the very first section of drain field chamber, which crushed it and caused water to soak the area around it. I had marked the leach field with stakes, plastic tape and a sign but that apparently was not enough to keep one of the contractors off of it.
The heavy rain we got Sunday evening was the from same storm that caused several deaths from a tornado in South Georgia. Fortunately, all we got was rain and straight-line wind. I was tracking the rain on my weather radar app and it was obvious why we got so much rain. There was a large area of circulation that didn’t move for a long time. It looked like a tropical storm.
These three images are from a sequence starting around 9:25 pm.
I looked for a way to animate the radar sequence but couldn’t figure out how to do it. I had to settle for grabbing a few shots in the sequence. There was a clear rotation around a center not far from our house.
More rain is predicted for Wednesday of this week but conditions are supposed to be clear for about a week after that. Some time during the clear weather I hope to do some more work in the front yard before everything washes away.
But I’m not complaining. We desperately needed the rain. We had dropped out of the “exceptional drought” condition down one level to “extreme drought” as of last week. The next drought map comes out later this week. Maybe we’ve improved.
That is a lot of rain in a short time. Sure has been a wet year so far. We’re even out of drought conditions here in California. Big wind storm Saturday night knocked down our backyard fence. Going to have to get that replaced, too old to rebuild. What a crazy start to the year, and I mean that in every way.
Robin — As of Thursday, this area’s drought condition has been downgraded to the third highest level, “severe drought”. We are above average for the month of January but we started the year with a deficit that still has not been filled.